Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#6240
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Ernie Lively represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 29 years in, and Ernie is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ernie Lively appears in 16 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ernie. The Man in the Moon is the clearest case: a film rated 7.4 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for mystery, thriller, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Tim Hunter, Sanaa Hamri, Ken Kwapis and others, Ernie Lively helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
The Man in the Moon (1991) as Will Sanders · The Thirteenth Floor (1999) as 30's Cop · The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005) as Franz Vreeland
Career snapshot
Ranked #6240 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
16
1989–2018
Career length
29 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.4
The Man in the Moon
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.4
The Man in the Moon
Most frequent director
Roger Spottiswoode
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Roger Spottiswoode
Most common genre
Comedy
9 titles
Average runtime
1h 40m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.4
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1980s
6.4 average MV
The 1980s are where the work and the material meet. Turner & Hooch — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1980s
6.4
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1980s
6.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1980s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Turner & Hooch.
Most productive era
1990s
10 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.43 films | 6.42 films | — |
| Action | 6.41 film | 5.95 films | — | — |
| Thriller | 6.41 film | 6.25 films | — | 4.81 film |
| Comedy | 6.41 film | 6.04 films | 6.24 films | — |
| Crime | 6.41 film | 6.22 films | — | — |
| Romance | — | 6.82 films | 6.13 films | — |
| Horror | — | 6.11 film | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1989Turner & Hooch
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Motel Clerk.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.4 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2018Looking Glass
The current state of the argument, as Tommy.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
16 of 16 films
as Will Sanders
Directed by Robert Mulligan
as 30's Cop
Directed by Josef Rusnak
as Tommy
Directed by Tim Hunter
as Franz Vreeland
Directed by Sanaa Hamri
as RV Salesman
Directed by Unknown
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Will Sanders
The Man in the Moon (1991)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Will Sanders gives Ernie Lively a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
30's Cop
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
Performance score6.9
The Thirteenth Floor asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. 30's Cop is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Tommy
Looking Glass (2018)
Performance score6.5
Looking Glass asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tommy is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Franz Vreeland
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008)
Performance score6.5
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Franz Vreeland is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Will Sanders
Start here. The Man in the Moon is the clearest statement of what Ernie Lively does — accessible, 99 minutes, and rated 7.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ernie at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
A deliberate change of key after The Man in the Moon — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Darwin Awards (2007)
A deliberate change of key after The Thirteenth Floor — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (2008)
Keeps the comedy register of The Darwin Awards but asks for a colder reading of it.
Looking Glass (2018)
A deliberate change of key after The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Roger Spottiswoode
Director
3 films together
Notably Turner & Hooch
Robert Mulligan
Director
1 film together
Notably The Man in the Moon
Mark L. Lester
Director
1 film together
Notably Showdown in Little Tokyo
Kevin Hooks
Director
1 film together
Notably Passenger 57
Mick Garris
Director
1 film together
Notably Sleepwalkers
Lee Tamahori
Director
1 film together
Notably Mulholland Falls
Félix Alcalá
Director
1 film together
Notably Fire Down Below
Penelope Spheeris
Director
1 film together
Notably Senseless
Josef Rusnak
Director
1 film together
Notably The Thirteenth Floor
Ken Kwapis
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Sanaa Hamri
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Tim Hunter
Director
1 film together
Notably Looking Glass
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Roger Spottiswoode
Director
3 films together · 5.9 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Turner & HoochRobert Mulligan
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Man in the MoonJosef Rusnak
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Thirteenth FloorKen Kwapis
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Sisterhood of the Traveling PantsMark L. Lester
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Showdown in Little TokyoSanaa Hamri
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2Penelope Spheeris
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SenselessMick Garris
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SleepwalkersLee Tamahori
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mulholland FallsKevin Hooks
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Passenger 57Félix Alcalá
Director
1 film together · 5.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Fire Down BelowTim Hunter
Director
1 film together · 4.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Looking GlassSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The Man in the Moon
as Will Sanders
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Man in the Moon
as Will Sanders
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Man in the Moon
as Will Sanders
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Darwin Awards
as RV Salesman
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Man in the Moon
as Will Sanders
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Ernie Lively has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
29 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
9 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
The Thirteenth Floor
as 30's Cop
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Thirteenth Floor
as 30's Cop
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Man in the Moon
as Will Sanders
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Thirteenth Floor
as 30's Cop
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Man in the Moon
as Will Sanders
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Passenger 57
as Chief Biggs
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
as Franz Vreeland
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Turner & Hooch
as Motel Clerk
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Morgan Freeman
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Have your say
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Reference
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